Electronic commerce transactions between an online merchant and its customers frequently involve the online merchant interacting with one or more third-party payment processors. For example, an online merchant might utilize one or more third-party payment processors to obtain a payment approval or guarantee for a customer purchase or other type of payment transaction.
For various reasons, it might not be possible for an online merchant to obtain a payment approval or guarantee at the time a customer makes a purchase. For example, a third-party payment processor might be inaccessible, and therefore unable to provide a payment approval or guarantee to an online merchant, due to a malfunction at a third-party payment processor, due to the failure of one or more data communications networks utilized to connect the merchant to a third-party payment processor, or due to the failure of components in the online merchant's system that are utilized to interact with a third-party payment processor. An online merchant might also be unable to obtain a payment approval or guarantee from a third-party payment processor, or to obtain a payment approval or guarantee in a timely fashion, for other reasons.
The failure of an online merchant to complete a payment transaction for a customer can result in a poor customer experience. For example, if a payment transaction is declined for a reason that is unrelated to the validity of the payment information provided by the customer, such as those described above, the customer might receive an indication that their payment could not be processed and be asked to re-enter their payment information. This can be very frustrating to a customer. The failure of a payment transaction to complete in a timely fashion might also be confusing and frustrating to the customers of an online merchant.
The inability to complete a payment transaction in a timely fashion might also subject an online merchant to financial risk in certain scenarios. For example, merchants typically do not ship physical items to customers until a payment guarantee for the items has been obtained. Some online merchants, however, utilize “optimistic” fulfillment with regard to digital items (e.g. audio and video files delivered digitally). Utilizing optimistic fulfillment, an online merchant might deliver ordered digital items to a customer after some period of time elapses after the order is placed, even though the online merchant has not yet received a payment approval or guarantee for the transaction. If the online merchant cannot subsequently obtain payment for the items, the online merchant will have suffered a financial loss.
The disclosure made herein is presented with respect to these and other considerations.